Regions – Virtual Montanahttp://explore.virtualmontana.com
Montana At Its BestThu, 19 May 2016 17:49:04 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8InFARMationhttp://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/05/infarmation/
http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/05/infarmation/#respondThu, 19 May 2016 17:49:04 +0000http://explore.virtualmontana.com/?p=3020Have you ever been driving around Montana, looked out the window and thought, as you whizzed by, “Hmm, that’s an interesting plant, I wonder what’s growing out there”?

For example, this. Why is that field yellow? Do they want it to be yellow? What do they mean to do with all of the yellow?

Chances are you have, unless you’re my father or father-in-law and your secret super power is the ability to identity grass species while cruising down the interstate at 80 miles per hour. But now you don’t need to! Let the InFARMation app give you all the information you need.

The amazing people at Central Montana teamed up with the Great Falls Electric City FFA and local producers to build the InFARMation app. Producers along a road-trip loop in the heart of Central Montana record what crop they are planting in their fields along the highway. As you drive along the loop, the app tells you where you are, what crop you are looking at, how it grows, what it’s used for and all sorts of other fun information. No more wondering what that spiky yellow plant is (it’s probably safflower) or why one field has sprinklers and another doesn’t. I can imagine that there are people in the world who wouldn’t really care about stuff like that, but somehow I doubt that those sorts of people do much road-tripping in Central Montana. At the moment the app only covers the loop from Great Falls to Stanford to Fort Benton and back, but Central Montana hopes to one day include all of the major roads in the region.

The project is based on a similar project that Washington State University did a few years ago, but better, because it is in Montana. It also reminds me of MDT’s Geologic Road Signs, except in app form. Also, it’s about crops, which if anything are even more awesome than rocks.

The app includes fantastic pictures, with close-ups of all of the crops, so you don’t have to go tromping through some farmer’s field to satisfy your amateur botanical curiosity (which is good, because that’s called trespassing, and you shouldn’t have been doing it anyway). Also, the descriptions provided are critically acclaimed. One reviewer called the writing “magnificent…lucid, and informative.” Ok, actually that reviewer was me, just now. And Central Montana hired me to write the crop descriptions. But the descriptions are both informative and concise (I had to restrain myself from writing a four-page cultural history of each and every crop). Besides, I had nothing to do with organizing the project or developing the app, and those are by far the best parts. So maybe I’m a bit biased, but look at it objectively: it’s an app that combines (heh, look, a tractor pun!) crops and Montana and Road Trips, I’d think it was a great app even if I wasn’t involved.

Oh, and you can get it for free on whatever sort of smart phone you happen to have.

]]>http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/05/infarmation/feed/0Lewis & Clark Caverns Wins MT March Madness!Ithttp://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/04/lewis-clark-caverns-wins-mt-march-madnessit/
http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/04/lewis-clark-caverns-wins-mt-march-madnessit/#respondFri, 08 Apr 2016 17:11:30 +0000http://explore.virtualmontana.com/?p=3013It was a close race, right to the very end. Both Bannack Ghost Town and Lewis and Clark Caverns were top contenders from the very beginning, and it was fitting that those two should face off in the final. But it was far from certain which would emerge victorious. Both are remarkable and unique. In the final tally, the Caverns pulled ahead, by the skin of their teeth. It is one of those competitions we could have again and again, and each time the results would be equally uncertain. Look for profiles on both glorious state parks in the weeks to come!

The field is getting smaller, but with Ghost Towns, geologic anomalies, and National Wildlife Refuges still in the running, it is still anyone’s game. Vote for your favorite Montana public spaces below:

What State Parks will emerge from the Montana March Madness Sweet Sixteen? You decide, vote below!

2016 March Madness Round 3

Vote on your favorite State Park or NWR in round 3!

Choose 1 of these 2

Grant Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site

Lewis & Clark Caverns

Choose 1 of these 2

Red Rocks Lake NWR

Smith River

Choose 1 of these 2

Thompson Chain of Lakes

Missouri Headwaters

Choose 1 of these 2

Painted Rocks

Giant Springs

Choose 1 of these 2

National Bison Range

Beaverhead Rock

Choose 1 of these 2

Granite Ghost Town

Lost Creek

Choose 1 of these 2

First People's Buffalo Jump

Elkhorn

Choose 1 of these 2

Madison Buffalo Jump

Bannack

]]>http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/03/montana-march-madness-sweet-sixteen/feed/0Montana Agates: The other state gemhttp://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/02/montana-agates-the-other-state-gem/
http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/02/montana-agates-the-other-state-gem/#respondSun, 14 Feb 2016 14:26:45 +0000http://explore.virtualmontana.com/?p=2943The editor would like to apologize for the lack of pun-y title. There’s got to be clever plays on the word “agate” but we just couldn’t think of one.

By Bhbritt54 at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.

Growing up, our house always had a collection of “interesting rocks.” Whenever we were walking around, if we saw an interesting rock, we would say “huh, that’s an interesting rock,” pick it up, and deposit it on the windowsill of our mudroom when we got home. We never really did anything with them, just had them. Most Montana homes I’ve visited have similar rock-strewn mudroom windowsills. It strikes me that if you sifted through all these collections of interesting rocks you might be able to make a very (very, very, very) small fortune. That is because many of these rocks are actually Montana moss agates,

When I asked my mom for a picture of our rock shelf, she pretended like we didn’t really have one. And then sent me this picture.

Agates are fascinating rocks. Imagine an ordinary river rock. Now imagine that instead of dull and rough, the rock is cloudily translucent, full of hues of yellow, blue and brown, and glassy-smooth. Agates form when silicon-rich water gets trapped in cavities within cooling magma. These cavities are often just air-pockets but are sometimes casts of tree limbs or other organic matter. As any connoisseur of Montana Department of Transportation Geologic Road Signs is aware, about 60 million years ago, Montana was a hotbed of volcanic activity and most of our agates date from that period. For specific science-y reasons that I’m not going to get into (but which I totally understand) agates have different layers of color throughout them. Many agates have distinct bands of color, but the colors in Montana moss agates are more amorphous and often look like drifting clouds, landscape horizons, or—hey!—moss. In Montana they are most common along the Yellowstone River, but they can also be found in other areas of former volcanic activity like the Boulder Batholith in SouthWest Montana.

In 1969 Montana state representatives named both agates and sapphires Montana’s official state gemstones. I’ve noticed that agates tend to get over-shadowed by Montana’s globe-trotting Yogo Sapphires—“the finest precious gemstones ever found in the United States”—but agates have their own unique charm—especially since an amature rockhound is more likely to find an agate. Moss agates, with their mossy yellows and browns, are the state gemstone, but you can also find other sorts, from precisely banded samples to vivid blue varieties. Agate hunting is a superb way excuse to explore off the beaten path, and, with any luck, you’ll walk away with a unique Montana souvenir.

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up writing for a Montana tourism blog. Then I look at this shelf in my parents’ house: random rocks, Ivan Doig, an Audubon bird guide, NPS maps…I was doomed a long time ago.

]]>http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/02/montana-agates-the-other-state-gem/feed/0Who Says Montana in December is Beautiful?http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/01/who-says-montana-in-december-is-beautiful/
http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/01/who-says-montana-in-december-is-beautiful/#respondThu, 14 Jan 2016 21:06:59 +0000http://explore.virtualmontana.com/?p=2911Who says that Montana in December is beautiful? (Besides us, a bunch of times)

I mean look at this tree. It isn’t the kind of picture you would see hanging in a fancy art gallery.

And this picture of the sun sparkling on Helena Reservoir doesn’t need to be accompanied by an epic soundtrack.

Montana definitely doesn’t have quintessential western winter scenes.

Or stark atmospheric shots:

Look at these cows, they sure aren’t happy to be in Montana in December.

And this moose? Totally bummed out.

The wind never swirls the snow in beautiful shapes.

Or perfectly dusts the folds of the hills.

And last Chance Gulch for Christmas? Definitely not perfectly picturesque.

I passed a car parked on the side of the highway. I looked back and realized that the driver was looking at a grizzly bear, so I whipped the mini-van around…as best as you can whip a mini-van around…and pulled over. The bear moved a road-kill carcass of the side of the road, and was hanging around in the area. But I didn’t know that at the time, with animals like that you sometimes only get a few seconds of footage before they disappear, so I jumped out of the van and started filming as quickly as I could.

My camera was set up for filming from our octo-copter, not the tripod. It didn’t have the LCD screen view-finder, or the right handles, or the right base to attach it to the tripod, but I was worried the bear might move, so I just sort of fit it together as best I could–the LCD screen was flapping all over the place, and the camera was wobbly–because I wanted to start getting footage as quickly as possible.

One of the many beautiful shots from the octo-copter.

By that time, other cars had parked, and lots of people were trying to get pictures (see Bear Jams) and lots of people were…well, they were taking some dumb risks (see our Bear Safety Tips). I was worried that I was going to go from filming a bear in the wild to filming a bear mauling people. I’ve had a lot of experience with bears over the years, and I’ve learned to be really careful. Early on in my career I was shooting down in Yellowstone. There was a huge collection of really photogenic bears down near East Yellowstone. One time, a bear was getting a little too close for comfort, so I grabbed my camera tripod and jumped into my car. But I couldn’t close the door because the tripod legs were in the way. The bear wandered within five feet of the car–too close for me. Since then, whenever I film grizzlies, I like to stay near the car, and I am always ready to abandon my camera and tripod (just don’t tell the Tempest owners).

In total I probably spent an hour and a half watching the bear. I got some great footage, but of course I missed some awesome shots as I was switching memory cards. That’s just part of the business. It was a great experience because it was one of the few times that I’ve seen a grizzly outside of Glacier or Yellowstone. And, the bear didn’t have a radio collar or an ear tag that I could see. In that sense it was a very wild bear.

]]>http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2016/01/grizzly-encounters/feed/0In Which a Merry Christmas is Wished to Allhttp://explore.virtualmontana.com/2015/12/in-which-a-merry-christmas-is-wished-to-all/
http://explore.virtualmontana.com/2015/12/in-which-a-merry-christmas-is-wished-to-all/#respondFri, 18 Dec 2015 13:02:15 +0000http://explore.virtualmontana.com/?p=2892Christmas is a time for spending with family and friends, but lots of people in Montana in the 1800s ended up spending Christmas away from their families. Miners, and lumberjacks, and railroad workers all ended up spending many Christmases in camps scattered across the unpopulated plains and mountains of Montana.

It may seem bleak but, in Christmastime in Montana, Dave Walter records Christmas celebrations from all sorts of camps and the like, and some of them didn’t seem half bad. In 1882, August Anderson was was working on the railroad outside of Glendive when Christmas came around. Anderson and two of his friends (whose names, no joke, were Sam Samuelson, and Andrew Andrewson) dug out a small cave in a bank and built a little room. They used powder cans to build a chimney (which seems dangerous – I mean, presumably they they were empty, but still, residue, or something). They bought five gallons of cognac and brewed a punch “that was nectar to the Swedes.” They spent all Christmas eve serving punch. Two or three people would come into the cave and have a drink, and then move along so that two or three more could file in. Anderson and Andrewson, and Samuelson served the entire camp. They had punch and sang Christmas songs and generally had a marvelous time. Anderson said that he had “never spent a more pleasant Christmas.